That means it's every driver's personal responsibility not to drive while tired.

Now a new safety device is helping to keep tired drivers off the road.

Trauma surgeon Dr Stephen Wilkinson sees the physical results of road trauma on his operating table.

• Caught on camera
• Drivers' unseen dangers
• Making cars safer

One of his medical colleagues was severely injured after falling asleep while driving home after a long day's surgery, and it’s scared this medico forever.

Since that day he's researched ways to detect drowsy drivers and he discovered OPTALERT glasses.

Dr Wilkison bought a pair of OPTALERT glasses out of curiosity. They've already proved their worth. The computerised glasses registered that his eyelid blinking rate was getting sleepy, which saved his life and others’.

Gadgets making driving safer

“There is an alarm that is definitely loud enough to wake you up. It's a sort of a beeping sound - a little bit like an ambulance siren. It beeps once, very loudly and it gives you an audible verbal message to say that you're in a danger zone,” Dr Wilkinson said.

“The problem is that are when you fall asleep you often go across the other side of the road, and there’s a head-on collision. It's the innocent people that get whipped out as well.”

Dr Wilkinson is a trauma surgeon, and believes that the OPTALERT glasses can save lives.

“I see a technology that can save lives, save disasters from happening, and save the stress and the tragedy to families. I see that all the time, and here is something that can potentially stop it.”

Sleep physician Murray Johns is behind the OPTALERT invention.

Through his work he discovered there is a correlation between how our eyes blink and how sleepy we are.

He developed a computer algorithm that translates that reading into a ‘sleep score’, and found that a sleep score predicts well ahead of time when you are likely to fall asleep.

“If you're between four and a half and five and a half it means there is some danger of you falling asleep, and if you’re above five and a half you really are at high risk of falling asleep without realising that it has happened,” Johns explained.

“We know that at least twenty per cent of road fatalities can be attributed to the driver's nodding off, or dozing off while they're driving.”

The glasses didn't happen overnight. Murray has worked on perfecting the system for sixteen years.

OPTALERT glasses are now worn by truck drivers at South American mining sites.

“The trucks they're driving are very expensive, large, worth several million dollars each, and they're working twelve hour shifts, night and day, 24 hours a day, every day of the year,” Murray said.

The readings from a driver wearing the OPTALERT glasses is monitored thousands of kilometres away, here in Australia, by Murray's team.

“This enables them, in real time, to manage their drivers. We are only monitoring it here in Melbourne. The driver actually gets the information himself.”

Top end car manufacturers are now spending billions to develop safety features.

Dr Joerg Breuer, the Head of Mercedes Benz real life safety division, says Mercedes’ latest radar system can read and react, making decisions in just 0.6 of a second.

“The radar sensors cover an area ahead of the vehicle, and can identify if you are approaching an obstacle or another car at a very high speed. They can issue warnings - visual warnings, acoustic warnings - and if you are on the brake the system can enhance your braking if necessary," Dr Breuer said.

Another new advance targets drowsiness - the cause of a third of crashes on our country roads. Within the first 30 seconds of getting behind the wheel, the car maps your driving behaviours. It reads your body language. Then if your attention starts to fade the car will tell you to pull over. If you lose control, it will take control.

“I'm a father of four young children, and I wouldn't buy a car that didn't have stability control or curtain air bags,” Dr Breuer said.

Understandably John Thompson of the Traffic Accident Commission also puts safety first.

The TAC stresses one thing this Christmas - don't rush.

“If you're tired and you can't swap drivers take a fifteen minute power-nap. It could save your life,” he said.

“The key thing is to get a good night’s sleep before you set out on a journey. Secondly, don't drive at a time when you're normally asleep.”

It sounds simple, but then so is falling asleep at the wheel.

• OPTALERT - www.optalert.com